Читать книгу It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work - Jason Fried, Jason Fried - Страница 16

We have all sorts of experts at Basecamp. People who can answer questions about statistics, JavaScript event handling, database tipping points, network diagnostics, and tricky copyediting. If you work here and you need an answer, all you have to do is ping the expert.

That’s wonderful. And terrible.

It’s wonderful when the right answer unlocks insight or progress. But it’s terrible when that one expert is fielding their fifth random question of the day and suddenly the day is done.

The person with the question needed something and they got it. The person with the answer was doing something else and had to stop. That’s rarely a fair trade.

The problem comes when you make it too easy—and always acceptable—to pose any question as soon as it comes to mind. Most questions just aren’t that pressing, but the urge to ask the expert immediately is irresistible.

Now, if the sole reason they work there is to answer questions and be available for everyone else all day long, well, then, okay, sounds good. But our experts have their own work to do, too. You can’t have both.

Imagine the day of an expert who frequently gets interrupted by everyone else’s questions. They may be fielding none, a handful, or a dozen questions in a single day, who knows. What’s worse, they don’t know when these questions might come up. You can’t plan your own day if everyone else is using it up randomly.

So we borrowed an idea from academia: office hours. All subject-matter experts at Basecamp now publish office hours. For some that means an open afternoon every Tuesday. For others it might be one hour a day. It’s up to each expert to decide their availability.